Adventures of Superman

Last year, the Royal Canadian Mint issued seven collector's coins to celebrate Superman's 75th anniversary. Looks like it's a hard habit to break, because at this year's Fan Expo in Toronto, the mint announced it was issuing four more coins with images from covers dating back to Superman's debut in 1938.

Though he's widely considered a U.S. hero, Superman has Canadian roots. Joe Shuster, who co-created Superman with Jerry Siegel, was born in Toronto.

The best Superman comic book currently published is about to get even better this coming Monday with the addition ofSteve Rude, arguably one of today’s best living American comic book artists, and Jerry Ordway, one of the key Superman storytellers of the '80s and '90s, and a brilliant and influential artist in his own right. The pair have collaborated on a Superman story starring OMAC, a cult favorite creation of Rude’s own hero, Jack Kirby, for an Adventures of Superman digital short that they describe as " a lost Max Fleischer Superman cartoon."

ComicsAlliance spoke with Ordway and Rude to learn more about the 10-page adventure, their impressions of Superman in this day and age, the digital comics revolution, and how these accomplished but very distinctive creators worked together on the story.

With the wrap-up of writer Joe Keatinge's multi-artist "Strange Visitor" epic in Adventures of Superman last week, the series is nearing a full year of weekly, digital Superman stories. It's easily been the best, most daring Superman title DC Comics has been publishing in 2013 and 2014 (and not just because Superman gets to wear his real costume in it). Edited by Alex Antone, Adventures of Superman invites creators from all strata of comics to put their own stamps on Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's original American superhero, free from the aesthetic constraints of the publisher's main line of New 52 comics and continuity. We like it so much, Adventures of Superman ended up on our list of the best comic books published in 2013.

We thought it would be a good idea to look back at the series so far, so I've compiled the following list of stories that readers unfamiliar with the series should go back and catch up with if they want the high points of the past year. At a dollar a pop, they're all well worth it.

On sale this Sunday from DC Comics, Adventures of Superman #48 concludes the three-part "Strange Visitor" digital-first storyline. Written by Joe Keatinge, the story is one of the warmest and most mind-bendingly meta Superman tales released in recent memory, seeing the Last Son of Krypton in eras ranging from the earliest years of his creation to billions of years in the future as he -- to put it as simply as possible -- tries to rescue the occupants of a rocket ship marooned in a dimension more treacherous than any Superman's visited before, one that he will have to prepare his whole life to traverse.

Over the past year, DC's digital Adventures ofSuperman anthology has played host to some of the most exciting creative teams working in comics today. With the current story, though, the scale of the whole project has gotten much bigger in both creative team and subject matter. Writer Joe Keatinge has been joined by an incredible roster of talent that includes Ming Doyle, Brent Schoonover, Dave Williams, Tula Lotay and Jason Shawn Alexander to chronicle a three-part epic that spans Superman's life from 1939 all the way to the end of time, and the end result is one of the best Superman stories I've read in a while.

To find out more behind how the project came to be and what he wanted to accomplish with it, I spoke to Keatinge and got his thoughts on the reason for multiple artists, the influence of Jack Kirby on the story, and how he compares and contrasts Superman and Dracula.

The best Superman comic book currently published is about to get even better with the addition of Steve Rude, arguably one of today's best living American comic book artists. The April 14 edition of DC Comics' digital-first Adventures of Superman anthology will see the master storyteller collaborate with writer (and a brilliant, influential artist in his own right) Jerry Ordway for a Superman story starring OMAC, a cult favorite creation of Rude's hero, Jack Kirby.

But Rude and Ordway are just two of the creators DC has lined up for the weekly Adventures of Superman -- one of ComicsAlliance's picks for the best comic books of 2013.

DC's digital-first line has provided an outlet for a lot of episodic, unconstrained storytelling starring characters from Teen Titans Go!, Batman '66, the Batman Beyond universe and more, but this Monday's Adventures of SupermanChapter 42 will take things a step further as Clark Kent spends a day babysitting Sheldon Mayer's Sugar and Spike in a new story by writer Fabian Nicieza and artists Phil Hester and Eric Gapstur.

There's still no date set for publication, nor is there an artist attached, but DC Comics Co-Publisher Dan DiDio said in a Wednesday interview that the Adventures of Superman story by writer Orson Scott Card, whose staunch position against gay marriage led to retailer boycotts when the issue was first solicited, is still going to happen.

DC Comics' digital first Adventures of Superman offers exactly what many readers have been asking for: a cast of great creators, free of continuity constraints, telling fun stories about the Man of Steel and the characters around him. So far talent like Jeff Parker, Jeff Lemire, Chris Samnee and Riley Rossmo have created tales featuring Superman, Bizarro, Brainiac, and more, and in the upcoming tenth chapter, writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning get their turn. Featuring art from Wes Craig and Craig Yeung, Adventures of Superman Chapter 10 shows a day in the life of Lex Luthor, which entails, among other things, Luthor doing exactly what you'd expect: making notes on his list of ways to kill Superman.

DC Comics has provided ComicsAlliance with a preview of Adventures of Superman Chapter 10, which you can check out after the cut.

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